Support of scientific research as a field of activity is one of the leading topics discussed in the professional library, especially foreign, periodicals. In 2020, there was conducted the analysis of research support services provided by research libraries of domestic and foreign universities. Based on the experience of the 2017’ study, the authors divided all research support services into two groups for the analysis of 2020: information and library services and general scientific services. Information and library services include all those that the library traditionally provides to its readers and users, taking into account the development of modern information technologies. General scientific services are essentially a certain continuation of the work with information that researchers have already received in the course of their work. For the analysis of research universities, the authors selected Russian universities that were included in the Shanghai ranking of world universities for 2020 (there are nine of them), followed by the same number of foreign universities. Comparison of the results of the 2017’ and 2020’ studies showed that university libraries have found stable, relevant directions and forms of communication with scientists. They can be grouped as follows: preparation and maintenance of special resources that are a priori useful to researchers for obtaining information necessary for conducting, promoting and organizing scientific research; assistance in preparing publications; assistance in using tools for scientific communication; assistance in working with research data; assistance in working with scientometric data; comprehensive support for scientific research. The article indicates that the core of this area of library and information activity has been formed over the past four years. The only significant difference in the activities of research libraries of foreign and domestic universities is that the latter do not offer data management services. The authors draw attention to the appearance in library activities of such type of services as “help”/assistance on the websites of libraries of domestic and foreign universities. The authors propose to consider it in the “help — consulting — support” paradigm, which reflects the competence level of the librarian.

The article considers the history of the All-Russian competition in library science, bibliography and book science. The article gives the historical background of founding of the Competition and the main normative legal acts that laid down the procedure for the organization of scientific research in the library sector. Active participation in the competition of federal libraries, central libraries of the Russian Federation, universities of culture, libraries and organizations of other departments allows us to consider it as a basis for institutional and content analysis of the flow of domestic scientific publications in the field of librarianship. The article analyses the content of the competition winners’ publications in accordance with the evolution of scientific research in the field of librarianship. The set of submitted works is considered as reflection of scientific potential in the library sphere. The authors highlight organizations and scientists who have received the highest professional recognition as winners and who have contributed to the development of library science, bibliography and book science. The resumption of the Competition in 2021 is considered as one of the mechanisms for scientific support of librarianship.

Libraries provide the variety of electronic local history products to preserve local history and transmit it via remote access. Due to the development of information technologies the quality of these products needs to be evaluated. In the course of study, the authors developed the working definitions of the concepts “Electronic local history products” and “Quality of electronic local history products”. To determine the quality of an electronic local history product, the study considers the existing approaches to their assessment in libraries, museums, archives, as well as in the area of higher education. The article determines the quality criteria, which are formed into four groups: formal, ergonomic, informative and local history. In the course of an expert online survey of 44 practitioners of the central and municipal libraries of the Kemerovo region, the authors coordinated the basic criteria for evaluating the quality of electronic local history products. Based on the developed criteria, there was carried out expert examination of electronic local history products of the V.D. Fedorov State Scientific Library of Kuzbass. The article analyses the digests “Environmental problems of the Kemerovo region” and “Calendar of significant and memorable dates in the Kemerovo region” that prevail on the library’s website. The conformance of quality criteria for calendars of significant and memorable dates and digests published by the library is presented in a matrix format. The study showed that the requirements for the quality of electronic information products in professional press are ambiguous. Specific approaches are required to reflect the local history component. To improve the system of electronic local history products, there is required the constant internal control and expertise of the products presented on the websites. The working list of criteria for their quality is open for completion. In the future, it needs to be approbated on the example of local history products from other libraries.

The article analyses the new book by the library scientist A.M. Mazuritsky, Doctor of pedagogical Sciences, who for many years has been studying the complex history of the genocide in relation to the culture of the peoples of our country, the policy of Nazi Germany on destruction and theft of book collections of Soviet libraries, as well as the ways of their salvation in the occupied territories. There is highlighted data on book losses in Russia obtained from state archives and publications in the press during the Great Patriotic War. The article presents A.M. Mazuritsky’s conclusions on the loss of powerful network of mass libraries in the USSR, the search for collections stolen by the Nazis and the restoration of the library system at the end of the war. In the final section of the book the author outlines the problems of restitution of book collections in the post-Soviet period.

The article presents the attempt to generalize the experience of working with graphic novels (comics, manga, etc.) available in the domestic book sector. The author considers the main stages of development in the historical perspective of forms and methods of popularization and distribution of graphic novels in Russia. At the first stage, formation of the segment of graphic novels in Russia was associated with the development of the festival movement. At the second stage — with the publishing boom and distribution of publications. Later — with work with a reader of graphic novels in libraries. Development of the festival movement was carried out due to the interest, first, in Japanese cartoons (anime) and Japnese graphic novels (manga), and secondly, in American comics and European graphic novels.

The author presents the festival movement in the context of the main directions: anime festivals and comics festivals (with special emphasis on the work of the ‘KomMissia’ [ComMission] festival). The article gives general characteristics of these types of festivals and reveals the degree of their involvement in the processes of forming the readership and professional environment at a certain evolutionary stage.

Bookstores and public libraries are the traditional operators of book dissemination and popularization of knowledge. The author explains why the integration of graphic novels into these spaces was delayed. The article notes the importance of reader communities in social networks in creating alternative channels for selling the products of publishers of graphic novels. In 2010, the Russian State Library for Young Adults (RSLYA) established the Centre for comics and visual culture, collecting graphic novels and providing methodological assistance to libraries that use graphic novels in their work. At present, it is the Centre for graphic novels and images that provides comprehensive support to libraries. The author highlights the role of the RSLYA as a methodological centre for library services to young people in the formation of loyalty to the new phenomenon among Russian library professionals. Based on the studied processes, the article gives characteristics of graphic novels as a new segment of the Russian book market with its inherent features of positioning in the reader’s environment.

The article is devoted to the memory of Irina Yurievna Fomenko (April 4, 1953 — May 30, 2020), philologist and book critic, the leading researcher in the Research Scientific Department of Rare Books (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library, responsible editor of four volumes of the “Union catalogue of Russian books. 1801—1825”. The authors give brief biography of I.Y. Fomenko, summarize information about her 150 scientific publications, which reflect the domestic publishing repertoire of the first quarter of the 19th century, relate to various aspects of working with early printed books, the subtleties of bibliographic description and book annotation. I.Y. Fomenko studied the creative heritage of M.N. Muravyev and defended PhD thesis on his prose. She wrote a number of articles for the Dictionary of Russian writers of the 18th century. With her participation, there were created catalogues of books of civil press and private owner’s collections from various holdings. Biographies of Russian writers of the 18th — 19th centuries, written by I.Y. Fomenko, were included in the collection of Russian literary studies.

The author reveals the commercial aspects of activity of the I. Ladyzhnikov publishing company in Berlin in the first decades of the twentieth century. This paper clarifies the company’s concept and fills in a number of gaps in the study of Russian-language foreign book publishing in the first decades of the twentieth century, due to the small number of comprehensive studies in this area. Getting acquainted with Russian-language emigrant book publishing is of great interest, since it reflects the large-scale processes of the post-revolutionary breakdown of the cultural life of Russia. The source base of the research is the documents of a number of Russian archives, as well as the archive of the I. Ladyzhnikov publishing company, discovered by the author at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam (Netherlands). The author introduces into scientific circulation a number of new, previously unpublished data about the I. Ladyzhnikov publishing company. The article reveals the circle of people who stood at its origins: on the one hand, these are the leaders of early Bolshevism (V.I. Lenin, L.B. Krasin, V.D. Bonch-Bruevich), on the other — the central figures of the writing group “Znanye” [Knowledge] (M. Gorky, К.P. Pyatnitsky). The author presents all the names under which the publishing company operated in different years, accurately dates the stages of its existence from the moment of its origin (5th August, 1905) to the beginning of the 1930s and proposes periodization. The archive of the publishing company preserved 40 contracts with the authors; therefore it was possible to determine the circle of writers and playwrights who collaborated with it: M. Gorky, S.S. Yushkevich, S.G. Petrov (Skitalets), A.N. Kuropatkin, S.N. Rabinovich (Sholom Aleichem), Sh. Ash and other writers. The author notes that among other tasks, the publishing house defended the copyright of Russian writers abroad. The article analyses the total annual circulation of publications, the number of authors, as well as the total annual turnover of the company. For the first time, the author considers the role and place of the “Novaya Russkaya Kniga” [New Russian Book] magazine in the activities of the I. Ladyzhnikov publishing company. The author established that the 1920s were the most successful in terms of commercial activity for the publishing company. Thus, from February to March 1924, the company “absorbed” three of the major competitors: “Helikon” publishing company, “Russian Universal Publishing Company” and “Epoch” publisher. The article presents the exact dates of the contracts for the purchase of publishers, the data on the sales value and the features of the agreements concluded. In particular, I. Ladyzhnikov company bought the publishers with the preservation of their trademarks, purchased their warehouses with commodity stocks, contracts concluded with authors, as well as debt obligations to banks. The author concludes that for almost the entire first third of the twentieth century, the I. Ladyzhnikov publishing company was the most powerful commercial enterprise among all the publishing companies of “Russian Berlin”.

One of the performance indicators of higher education institutions is publication activity of scientific and pedagogical staff in journals indexed by the international scientometric databases Web of Science and Scopus. Of particular interest is the study of the possibility of publications in foreign journals with a high quartile. The issue of foreign publications is acute for domestic researchers of library and information activities. The study identified 227 foreign journals that reflect the category “Library and information sciences” and publish information in English. There were selected for study 130 journals indexed in the Web of Science. The analysis of indicators of professional foreign periodicals allowed to make the rating of journals that are relevant for publishing scientific articles on teaching the library disciplines. The detailed analysis of the topics of publications in the identified journals helped to determine specialized foreign periodicals on library and information issues. During the analysis, there were selected the professional journals that reflect the results of research in the field of principal disciplines of the mandatory part of the bachelor’s degree program in “Library and information activities”.

The article considers the topics of specialized professional periodicals of foreign countries. For the selected publications, the author compiled the comparative table of the thematic distribution of publications with chronological coverage of 10 years that allowed identifying thematic headings with high publication activity. The article presents the analysis of territorial distribution of journals and identifies the leading foreign publishers. The author briefly highlights the features of publication placement in foreign journals. Based on information provided on the information and analytical portal eLIBRARY.ru, the author conducted the assessment of placement of publications by leading researchers in the field of library science in identified periodicals. The article presents the results of analytical review of the main foreign journals indexed by Web of Science and related to the first and second quartile, which publish articles in English and reflect issues in library and information sphere. The author established that publication in foreign professional periodicals can be implemented by domestic researchers and teachers of library and information disciplines, both in the analysed journals and other specialized publications and journals in related scientific fields.

Over the past decades, advertising for the library has become a mandatory part of the activity, but the approach to its creation is largely based on accepted stereotypes that express the most common ideas about the properties of such a complex phenomenon as the target audience of the library. Advertising can be expressed through an advertising image that contains not only objective but also subjective information; it uses associations, metaphors, emotions, visualization of something that has a generalizing character, i. e. a layer of implicit information is added to the exact data and read automatically. One of the problems of creating an advertising image may be that there are contradictions between the perception of the person who creates an advertising based on a stereotype and its recipient. The article reflects the experience of the State Public Scientific Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS) in the study of two groups — “Event visitors” and “Readers”. The study involved 326 people (254 visitors to mass events and 72 readers of the SPSTL SB RAS). The author tested the method of semi-formalized interview to get relevant information for better understanding the audience’s motivation and desires. It is assumed to use pre-made plan with a list of mandatory questions, while using general wording and their variations, “close to the text”, and observing the general logic in their sequence.

The author analyses the data on distribution of users in both groups (“Event visitors” and “Readers”) by the age categories and employment areas; frequency of library visits; frequency of references to forms of work that are called in demand and found interesting in both groups; frequency of references to preferred information channels. The article presents the main positions for creating an advertising image of the library. The author shows the expediency of using the semi-formalized interview method to adjust the advertising image of the library and the campaign to promote events, resources and services based on it, both for individual groups and for several segments in parallel, if the library’s event or service does not have a specific addressee. The article reveals the method of work that can be applied in the analysis of the advertising image for other libraries.

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